Redeem

by Janice M. Whiteaker

  He grabbed a can himself, trying to ignore the trash can as he walked past. “Did Ladonna say she had a good day?” He took a swig of the ice cold beverage, the urge to save his last cookie making his fingers itch. The trash can was relatively empty and it’s not like he planned to eat it.

  He never did.

  It was just seeing it there, on his counter every morning when he started the coffee. At night when he sorted his mom’s medication and made her dinner. It made him feel…

  Better.

  “Ladonna said she was quiet. I guess that’s the best we can hope for, right?” Tara rolled the pretzel bag back up and slid on the clip that held it in place. She put the bag away and looked at him over her shoulder. “When are you going to be ready to talk about placing her somewhere?”

  Don looked at the empty plastic container on the counter. “It’s going okay for now.”

  His sister dropped her head toward one shoulder and cocked an eyebrow at him. “Okay? Do you even have a life?”

  He scowled at her. “I am just fine.”

  His sister slapped him on the shoulder as she pushed past him to get to the living room. “I didn’t say you weren’t fine. I asked if you had a life.” She flopped down on the couch and scrolled through her phone. “When was the last time you went out?”

  He stood silently.

  “See? All you do is work and take care of her.” She held out her phone for him to look at. “I had to do some research on jobs in the area for a class I’m taking and look what I found.”

  He took the phone and scanned the screen. It was a listing for a building inspector in the city where his two sister’s lived. He handed the phone back. “It’s not that simple.”

  She snatched the phone away giving him a dirty look. “Why? Nothing is keeping you here but her. Come be close to us. You can go back to doing what you used to and start over.” She looked at their mother’s closed door. “She’ll be fine. She doesn’t really know who any of us are anyway. We can even put her in a place close by so you can go see her as much as you want.”

  Don shook his head. “I think its fine the way it is.”

  Tara got off the couch and came to stand in front of him. “Donnie, I just want you to be happy too.”

  He gave her a smile. “I am happy. As long as you and Jill get out of here and away from all this,” he swept one finger in a circle, pointing at the trailer around them, “that’s what will make me happy.”

  “Why don’t you come out with me tonight?” Tara poked him in the chest. “Despite what you say I still believe you are in desperate need of some socialization.” She gave him a grin. “There will be girls.”

  He rolled his eyes. “You’ve got that right. Little twenty-year-old girls.” He shook his head. “Not interested.”

  She raised her eyebrows up and down. “I’m sure there will also be grown-up women in the vicinity for you to converse with.” She grabbed his hand. “Come on.”

  He looked at her with all the seriousness he could muster up. “No thank you.”

  Tara dropped his hand and narrowed her eyes. “You’re going to be a boring old man aren’t you?”

  He pinched her cheek and walked past her. “Already am.”

  It took him another hour to convince his sister he really wasn’t going to be spending the evening in an eighteen-and-up club with underage kids as they tried pretending their virgin daiquiris were the real deal. By the time she pulled away from the trailer, he was exhausted and feeling every bit the crotchety old man she told him he was turning into.

  Her brake lights were barely out of sight before he shut the door and walked straight to the trash can. The cookie he’d been saving was sitting on top of a stack of junk mail he’d filtered through last night. He reached in and saved it, placing the partially eaten disk back in the container where it belonged. He stared at the lid after pressing it firmly back in place.

  Thank you for being so thoughtful

  Beth

  He tore his eyes from her perfectly sloped handwriting and slipped the nearly empty gift onto the top shelf of the upper cabinet, hidden from sight. At least until his sister was back at school and wouldn’t be around to question the cookie’s reappearance because he wasn’t quite sure he’d be able to explain it.

  Not without sounding a little crazy. Or a lot crazy.

  Don pulled out his mother’s pill tray and carefully slid the evening’s medication into the small bowl. He fished around in the fridge for the rest of the chicken noodle soup Ladonna brought yesterday. His mother loved it last night and hopefully she would feel the same tonight.

  Tara’s opinion of his mother today was spot on. She sat quietly while he situated her room, ate a full bowl of warm soup and was even able to climb into bed with only a little bit of help. If he was less experienced in this arena, tonight would give him hope things were looking up, that her condition was improving. Unfortunately, this was most likely a calm before a storm.

  “Goodnight mom.” Don pulled his mother’s door shut and went back to straighten the kitchen. As he folded the damp dishrag after wiping down the small amount of countertop, his eyes found the cabinet where his last cookie hid, safely away from people who couldn’t understand its value.

  Don checked the clock on the stove. It was almost nine.

  He cracked open his mother’s door and found her sleeping peacefully, tucked under the steady warmth of her electric blanket. He softly pulled the door closed and stood staring at the thin plywood veneer.

  Damn weather.

  Don rubbed one hand up and down his arm, trying to calm the urge to leave the house. It was a feeling he’d been trying to keep in check all week. Every night once his mom was in bed, he paced the trailer, struggling to focus on anything besides…

  He looked toward the cabinet then shook his head before any sort of stupid thoughts could worm their way in.

  He was starting to get a little stir crazy, that’s all. It was just the winter. Being cooped up after being used to spending every day from sunrise to sunset outside working. Maybe that was the problem.

  Pushing open the door to his small room, Don pulled on a pair of knit pants and a fitted, long-sleeved t-shirt and grabbed his boxing gloves. Maybe some physical activity would help work out the unrest crawling under his skin. The same irritating sensation that was whispering dumb ideas in his ear.

  Don’s breath puffed in the cold night air as he unlocked the small shed that took up most of the backyard. He slid in and shut the doors before switching on the small heater in the corner of the building. The first of his punches hit the weighted bag hanging heavily from the reinforced rafters before the little heater had even warmed up.

  The air was so cold it burned his lungs and he pushed himself, bouncing from foot to foot, punishing the bag.

  Because he couldn’t really punish himself.

  But that is what he should be focusing on. His stupidity. His misdirected anger. His mistakes. Time and time again he’d successfully proved himself to be an accurate representation of how a kid grows up to be a product of his environment.

  Fill a kid with anger and tell him he’s a piece of shit and guess what happens?

  He grows up to be an angry piece of shit.

  An angry piece of shit who was also stupid enough to want something better. Someone better.

  Don wiped at the cold trail of sweat picking up speed as it slid down his temple. He hit the bag again. And again.

  And again.

  Every time those pale green eyes or those perfectly soft lips edged into his thoughts, he hit harder, moved faster. Fighting to free himself from the whisper of hope he heard anytime he thought of Beth Dalton.

  It wasn’t until he was lying, back against the cold mats covering the plywood floor, looking up at the open rafters, his breathing labored and his body exhausted, that Don knew he’d failed. Again.

  Beth and her girls weren’t banished from his mind. The feeling of warmth that tried to get a foothold in his chest w
henever they were around wasn’t gone. He was still an idiot.

  Don slung his forearm over his eyes as he steadied his breathing. Maybe it was because he was worried about her. Almost since the start, he’d been by her house nearly every day. At first it was the farm work, then the cold set in and brought an abundance of bad weather for him to manage.

  Until this week.

  He pushed up from the floor. That was it. He was just used to knowing they were fine. All he needed was a quick drive-by the farmhouse, check things out, and then he would be just fine.

  That was all.

  ****

  “What the fuck?” Beth jumped up from the couch as the smell of burning sugar reached her nose. Her socked feet helped her slide across the floor as she sprinted to the kitchen. The girls were sleeping soundly and if the smoke detector went off and woke them up?

  She might lose her shit.

  That was a lie.

  She would definitely lose her shit.

  Beth whipped open the oven door and a puff of faintly smoky air jumped out. She yanked the cookie sheets off the racks and dropped them on the cooktop then ran to grab a stool and the closest magazine she could get her hands on. She stood on the stool waving the glossy pages under the smoke alarm until her arms burned.

  She slowly dropped the periodical. Almost instantly, the alarm started screaming. “You son of a bitch. If you wake up those girls I’ll kill you.” She waved the unread fitness magazine like her life depended on it, and as sad as it might sound, it felt a little like it did.

  Today was a rough day.

  That actually might be in the running for understatement of the year.

  Finally, Beth couldn’t take anymore. She reached up and popped the cover off the alarm then pried out the battery. The heavy d-cell bounced off her big toe before landing on the floor. Letting her head fall back, she took a deep, still slightly smoky smelling breath.

  “Fuck me.”

  She listened intently but by the grace of God the house stayed quiet. Beth’s shoulders relaxed incrementally. Hopefully her night of peace wasn’t over. Especially since, because of cookies and alarms, it hadn’t actually started yet.

  Some mothers spent their quiet time after putting the kids to bed knitting. Some read books. Some drank wine.

  She cussed, ate bad food, and watched scary movies.

  Unfortunately, tonight’s bad food choice was upping the word count on her normal cussing quota. Beth climbed off the stool and went to stare at her cookies.

  They didn’t look like the best cookies in the world.

  They looked like the best cookies in the world and charcoal briquettes had a baby. An ugly baby.

  She tipped up one of the cookies on the tray she’d set on the lower rack and inspected it. The whole bottom was nearly black. Not quite, just nearly.

  Beth grabbed a butter knife and scraped it against the dark brown cookie. It took a little elbow grease, but after a couple minutes, she was able to whittle off most of the over-done area. She took a bite.

  It tasted like crap.

  She used her tongue and a fast blow to shoot the bite from her mouth into the sink and dropped the rest back onto the cookie sheet with his friends. “Damn it.”

  Luckily, this wasn’t much of a surprise. She’d been prepared to suck at her first attempt at solo cookie making.

  Beth grabbed a spoon from the drawer and the tube of commercial cookie dough from the fridge and went back to watch her movie, flopping onto the overstuffed and extremely comfortable couch Nancy left in the farmhouse when she moved in with Paul.

  Thank God Paul had a well-furnished house because all Beth managed to hang onto from her old life were the girls matching beds and her van. Everything else went to satisfy the debts her dead husband racked up in their name.

  Beth sank back into the sofa. “Shit.” She forgot to cut open the cookie dough. Scanning the coffee table under her feet, she found no alternative opening device. Not a nail file, not a letter opener, not even a fork she could stab into the plastic and wiggle around to make a hole big enough to eat out of.

  Her head fell back against the couch as she groaned. Clean the house and suffer the consequences. She got back up and went to the kitchen, using a pair of scissors to snip a nice, big hole in the top. The air in the room still smelled charcoal broiled. “Ugh.”

  Setting the cookie dough and spoon on the counter, she grabbed a gallon size ziplock bag and shoved the well-done cookies in, pinching the top closed to seal the stink in. Dropping the bag on the counter, Beth picked up her late night snack and went back to the couch.

  It wasn’t until a quarter of the way through both the cookie dough and second favorite scary movie of all time that Beth began to realize her bargain price baggie was cheap for a reason. The smell of overdone cookies finally worked its way into the living room and was hovering around her, reminding Beth of just how terrible of a cook she was.

  And it was making her pissy. She covered her nose with the heavy knit blanket wrapped across her lap and tried to ignore it.

  But now instead of enjoying the quiet after the storm of tantrums and flat tires that filled her day, Beth sat stewing. Who couldn’t bake a batch of freaking cookies? How in the world could she mess up a recipe she’d been baby stepped through?

  She should have made Kate help her before sending them to bed.

  But then they would’ve wanted to eat her cookies and that was the whole point of waiting until they were asleep. So she could enjoy them.

  Alone.

  Beth flipped the blanket off. It flopped to the floor, taking what was left of her cookie dough with it and sending the spoon flying across the room. Stomping her way back to the kitchen, Beth stuffed both arms into her winter coat and grabbed the offending bag of cookies off the counter as she headed back to the front of the house.

  The only shoes by the door were her tall cherry red mucks. She shoved her feet in, wiggling back and forth, trying to keep her bumble bee leggings around her ankles and yanked open the front door. The wind blew the small wispy strands of light brown hair hanging free of her messy bun into her eyes. She tried to snag them loose with her fingers as she stomped to the line of plastic trash cans against the front corner of the house.

  Holding the hinged lid open, Beth was just about to drop the bag in when the sound of a car grabbed her attention. Her heart skipped a beat.

  She rolled her eyes. Don hadn’t been back since the night she kissed him. Probably because she had to go and make a perfectly sweet situation weird and uncomfortable.

  Her hand hovered as the headlights from the approaching car cut off, leaving it nearly invisible as it slowly rolled toward the farmhouse. Beth froze. That was not normal. She slowly let the lid down and crouched low beside the large can.

  Did she lock the door behind her?

  No. The house was unlocked for anyone who wanted to try to get inside.

  Her heart was in her throat as she thought about the kinds of people who cruise down deserted country roads with their lights off. Nice people out for a midnight drive didn’t do that. People who were lost definitely didn’t turn their lights off.

  Only people who didn’t want to be seen did that. Beth eased deeper into the shadows at the side of the house as the car slowly continued her way. Her unused snow shovel sat propped against the white wood siding. She grabbed it, her eyes catching on the silver metal blade running across the edge.

  Oh yeah. She could do some damage with this if she had to.

  The car slowly turned into her driveway, its tires crunching against the gravel apron before quietly coasting onto the concrete driveway Thomas and Paul poured last fall. Beth gripped the handle of her impromptu weapon with one hand and the bag of cookies with the other as she planned a one two approach. Cookies to the face then shovel to the head.

  It might not be the best plan, and its effectiveness was untested, but she sure as hell wasn’t going down without a fight.

  NINE

  Beth
squinted against the darkness as the car sat near the end of her driveway, quietly idling. Or maybe it only seemed quiet because she could barely hear it over the blood rushing through her veins. What in the heck was going on? Were they just checking the place out, getting a feel for the routine of the people inside so they would know when was a safe time to break-in?

  She’d fill them in. Never. Never was a safe time to break-in. Beth stood up straight. She wasn’t going to cower in the shadows like some scaredy-cat. If they thought this was an easy place to hit because she was a woman on her own, then these guys were about to find out just how scary a mother protecting her babies could be.

  Stepping out of her hiding spot and onto the driveway Beth swung the heavy shovel over her shoulder and stared at the car. Hard. She was not going to hide in her house, peeking out the windows for the next week worried this guy was coming back to steal her DVD player and rifle through her underwear drawer.

  She started walking toward the car, hoping to look as threatening as a five-foot-two, hundred and twenty pound woman in her pajamas could look. Then again maybe her wild hair and crazy outfit would work in her favor. Made her look like a woman on the edge. After the day she had it wasn’t a tough look to pull off.

  After a few steps, she was feeling a little like a bad ass. Tough. Strong. Unafraid.

  Then the door opened.

  “Oh shit.” This was a bad idea.

  Her legs stopped moving forward. She froze, trying to remember the plan. One, two. Cookies, shovel. That was it.

  A man climbed out of the car, a confused look on his stupidly handsome face.

  “Beth, are you okay?” Don stepped from behind the open door, letting it swing closed.

  Beth swallowed and stared. With all this damn cold weather she’d only seen him well covered lately, and tonight he was still covered, but not in the normal jeans and long-sleeve work shirt. A pair of black work-out pants hung from his hips and a gray t-shirt clung to his body like a second skin, showing every hard earned muscle chiseled into his torso. His crystal eyes were fixed on her from under a black fleece hat.